My Wake for the Edwards Building

In 1970, Appalachian Center's first office (all two rooms thereof!) was located on the first floor of the Edwards Building, the same place that in the early 1950s Loyal Jones, on the third floor, had served as an RA for the Foundation School. Loyal has shared how he met young men who would become life-long friends, such as Truman Fields.

Well, yesterday from 5:30 to 7:30, I watched as the last fourth of Edwards (nearest the traffic light) was torn down. At times, I saw what was left of the whole edifice shake. And it was something to see the round window on the third floor busting out as a big, expertly maneuvered excavator gently peeled away a pillar of bricks.

Completed in 1903, the building opened as the Men's Industrial Building (MIB), one of four such buildings (the others now joined together as Stephenson Hall, where LJAC now dwells). The MIB's cornerstone read, "Industry, Skill, Brotherhood, Religion." It first housed a wagon and a mason shop on the first floor, a sloyd and a tailor shop on the second, and had 25 rooms for two to four young men on the third floor.

Berea was following the path laid out by Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes, and at that time, black and white students still went to Berea. Then came the Day Law.

Since then, the building has seen MANY uses: residential rooms for the Foundation School, a greenhouse, the post office, being THE Foundation School, the Testing and Reading Lab, and was the first location of the Black Cultural Center from 1983-1995. In the last ten years, Edwards primarily held College Relations (now Philanthropy) with rooms for women students on the third floor.

I have heard that many alumni and community members are upset that the building has come down. I understand. We care about what Berea has been, what we are, and where we are going. I, like many--maybe most of you--also care about honoring the work done and not wasting building materials. But yesterday I verified with the head of the demolition the down-right dangerous condition of the building's structure.

White clouds of lime dust billowed out as sheaves of bricks, virtually unconstrained by mortar, tumbled down. Once down, I saw a workman in gloves swipe a brick clean. I can still taste the lime from where I watched in the trees.

So THANK YOU (here I guess I'm speaking here to the universe) for all the good work and good Bereans who have operated out of that ole lovely but decayed pile of bricks over the last 120 years.

Construction on the next 120 should begin soon.

(historical information from Robert Boyce's *Building A College: An Architectural History of Berea College,* 2006, pp.127-130. Replicated at https://libraryguides.berea.edu/Edwards_Building)

Article Written by Chris Green